ture of this instrument for present consideration was the understanding, expressed by the Senate in ratifying it, that "the treaty shall not be deemed to repeal or affect any of the provisions of the Act of Congress entitled 'An Act to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens into the United States,' approved February 20, 1907." That understanding was accepted by the Japanese government, and Baron Uchida appended to the treaty a declaration that the Japanese government was "fully prepared to maintain with equal effectiveness the limitation and control which they have for the past three years exercised in regulation of the emigration of laborers to the United States." The sinister, sordid, and insincere campaign against the Japanese on the Pacific coast continued, however, both secretly and openly, until it culminated again in 1913 in proposals for of fensive discriminatory legislation. The California legislature first adopted a resolution demanding the application of the Chinese exclusion act to the Japanese. Next it purposed the enactment of one of two bills. One, introduced into the assembly, forbade "aliens ineligible to citizenship" to own land in that State. The other, in the senate, forbade any aliens to own land, but promised to protect all in their treaty rights. The former naturally elicited protests from the Japanese, since it was obviously aimed against them; they being excluded from citizenship by the interpretation of the laws which conferred the privilege of naturalization upon none but Caucasians and Negroes, excluding the Mongolian race, to which the Japanese were held to belong. The senate bill was protested by other countries, though without due reason, since the right of a State to exclude aliens from ownership of land had long been exercised without protest by other States of this union, and by the Federal Government itself in the Federal District and the Territories, as well as by other countries, including Japan. For this reason Japan did not protest against the senate bill but only against that of the assembly. She admitted California's right to exclude all aliens from landowning, but insisted that if any were permitted to own land, her citizens must be, under the provision of the treaty which gave them all the rights and privileges here which the citizens or subjects of any other land enjoyed. This view of the case, taken by Japan, was also taken by the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who advised the California legislature to that effect, and urged the dropping of the offensive and discriminatory phrase "ineligible to citizenship" from the assembly bill. Further to emphasize his views and to influence the legislature against offensive measures, Wilson sent his secretary of state, William J. Bryan, to California, to reason and plead with that body. The legislature listened to Bryan courteously, and disregarded his pleadings with rare unanimity. It then passed a bill not, indeed, excluding those "ineligible to citizenship" from landowning, but admitting to that privilege those "eligible to citizenship"! It also enacted that all others—to wit, those ineligible to citizenship—might acquire and hold land to the extent of the provisions of any treaty existing between their country and the United States. Against this ingenious attempt to "whip the devil around a stump" Wilson protested, as calculated to lead to litigation to determine the treaty rights of aliens; but the legislature persisted in passing it. Japan of course protested against it, on April 12. It was, she held, a violation of her rights under the treaty, which said: "The citizens or subjects of each of the high contracting parties shall have liberty to enter, travel, and reside in the territories of the other, to carry on trade, wholesale and retail, to own or lease and occupy houses, manufactories, warehouses and shops, to employ agents of their choice, to lease land for residential and commercial purposes, and generally to do anything incident to or necessary for trade upon the same terms as native citizens or subjects." To this protest the United States made, on May 19, a reply which was not satisfactory to Japan, and the controversy was continued thereafter at intervals, without definite result; the anti-Japanese agitation in the United States also being continued whenever the slightest opportunity was afforded. The really essential feature in this latest California legislation was passed over with little notice, though thoughtful men saw in it the supreme issue which must one day be settled. The senate bill as at first proposed promised to protect all aliens in their treaty rights, and the bill as finally passed guaranteed to aliens all their existing treaty rights. Both these provisions in effect made the State of California the authority which was to safeguard aliens in their treaty rights and which was to enforce and execute the treaty obligations of the United States! A more egregious example of exalting the less above the greaterthe State above the nation-has seldom been recorded in our history. VOL. II-20. A XXXIV THE ISTHMIAN CANAL MERICA'S embarrassment was France's opportunity. The dispute with Great Britain over the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and the discredit and odium which were incurred by this country through the Walker episode in Nicaragua, served for a time as a hopeless handicap upon all American schemes for an interoceanic canal across any part of the Central American isthmus. Then was Louis Napoleon's chance. While a prisoner at Ham he had speculated upon the immeasurable possibilities of such a waterway, even offering to renounce forever his pretensions to the French imperial crown if he were released and permitted to go to Nicaragua to essay that enterprise. Following Walker's raids he sent over a shrewd agent, Felix Belly, who represented to the Central American States that the United States was their enemy and that their only safety lay in the protection of the three European powers which had just guaranteed the integrity of Turkey, namely, France, Great Britain, and Sardinia; and persuaded Nicaragua and Costa Rica to settle their differences, and to grant him a canal concession. This was to give him all the privileges which the American Atlantic and Pacific Canal Company had enjoyed, and in addition the right to maintain two French warships in Lake Nicaragua. This was in May, 1858. The United States government was perplexed with ominous domestic complications, but it could not ignore this menace. Cass, the secretary of state, accordingly informed the French government, through Mason, our minister in Paris, that the United States desired to see the Isthmian routes opened and free for the commerce of the world, and the States of that region well governed, prosperous, and free from the control of all foreign powers; that it could not consent to the assumption of any European authority over those States; and that the landing of any European forces there would have unfortunate results. This declaration was effective. The By this time, however, the policy of the United States concerning the canal had become definitely fixed. President Grant in 1869 declared it to be "of vast political importance that no European government should hold such a work," and his successor, President Hayes, proclaimed the American purpose to be to secure "an American canal under American control.” Numerous surveys of routes were made by the Government, as a result of which the Interoceanic Canal Commission in February, 1876, unanimously reported in favor of a route at Nicaragua, from Greytown to Brito, by way of the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua. The secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, at once sought to negotiate with Nicaragua a treaty for the construction of such a canal, and with Great Britain such modification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty as would permit this country to construct and control the canal. Grant's administration closed, however, before anything practical was effected in those directions. At the same time another and the last French enterprise was undertaken. Gorgoza, a Spanish explorer and surveyor, ex |